by Pia Tremayne
“Sit up,” he said gruffly, before she could say anything. “I have to talk to you.”
She sat up and put her feet on the floor. She pushed her hair away from her face, looking puzzled. “What is it? What’s happened?”
“Tell me about the seven million dollars,” he said abruptly.
She looked at him blankly. “The seven million dollars?”
“Yes,” he said, his voice hard. “The money you used to pay off your loan in Jamaica. Where did it come from?”
She stared at him, her face still blank, and then he saw her expression begin to change.
“How did you know about that?” she asked him, curiosity and disbelief warring on her face with the stirrings of anger.
“Never mind how. Just tell me.”
“You’ve paid someone to spy on me, haven’t you,” she said slowly.
“For God’s sake, tell me, Nicola. Did you sleep with someone to get the money?”
The blood fled from her face. “I don’t believe you did that. How could you invade my privacy like that?” she cried.
“I asked you a question,” he said, his jaw clenched.
“And you’re not getting an answer,” she yelled. “I don’t owe you an explanation. Think whatever suits you, Anthony,” she said in a quieter voice. She got up abruptly and pushed past him to the stairs. “I’m getting out of here.” She flew up the stairs and rushed into the bedroom. She opened the closet door, took out her bag, and began to stuff her clothes in. He raced up the stairs, two at a time.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” he asked, appearing suddenly in the doorway.
She ignored him, continuing to stuff her things into her bag. He came into the bedroom and stood at the foot of the bed.
“You’re not leaving until you give me an explanation,” he said through gritted teeth. “I think I’m entitled to one.”
She closed her bag and looked at him then, her eyes unnaturally bright.
“You’re not entitled to anything, Anthony. But I will answer your questions to save you the expense of paying someone to find out. One, I got the money from a friend. Two, I’m on my way to Jamaica and three, as soon as I get there, I’m going to marry him.”
“The hell you’re not!”
“The hell I am! Now let me pass,” she said.
She brushed past him and walked down the stairs. As she opened the front door he came running down the stairs, pushed it shut and held it to prevent her from leaving.
“Who is he? At least tell me that.” he demanded, jealousy gnawing the pit of his stomach, his heart, his whole goddamned body.
“Since you must know, his name is Antonio Mendoza Torres. Now, please open the door.”
He went white. His hand fell from the doorknob. “Who did you say?” he demanded hoarsely. He couldn’t have heard her right.
She looked at him, then pulled the door open and went out without answering. He stood there, reeling from the second major shock he had received in the space of an hour. At last, he shut the door, went back into his study, and slumped into the chair.
* * * *
As the plane began its descent, Nicola’s eyes were riveted on the Blue Mountains, always there to tell her she was home. Usually, their beauty made her feel teary, but this time she didn’t have any tears left. She had cried them all over the past ten days since she had walked out of his town house.
She had been so naïve, with her ridiculous timetable—six months until she confessed all, and then they would fall into each other’s arms and live happily ever. But he had been suspicious of her all along and now he had the proof. She paid her way with sex. That’s what he thought, anyway. She was no different from any of the women who put themselves up for auction, and the fact that she had been a virgin didn’t really change anything. Everybody was one, once upon a time. She had told him so herself. Why would he ever believe that from the first night, the first moment he touched her, she had known her heart would never belong to anyone else. She wasn’t going to marry Antonio. She had flung that at him out of the depths of hurt and anger. What she was going to do was take care of her land, her inheritance, and devote herself to her father’s dream, which had become hers. Eventually, she would repay her debt and the land, and maybe the dream would pass to her unborn child.
She wiped her eyes. It seemed she hadn’t shed all her tears yet after all.
Chapter Thirty-One
Theodore Mossman, senior partner in the law firm of Mossman & Mossman, whose chambers were located in New Kingston, Jamaica, stood up when Sir Anthony Astonville was shown into his office. Sir Anthony’s secretary had called from London three days earlier to make an appointment for her boss, stating that he wished to see Mr. Mossman on an urgent personal matter.
Sir Anthony shook his outstretched hand, sat down and began to explain the reason for his visit. Mr. Mossman grew increasingly agitated as Sir Anthony continued to explain. He studied the photographs and documents Sir Anthony had passed to him with obvious dismay.
“I had no idea,” he stuttered finally, when Sir Anthony had concluded.
“Obviously not,” Sir Anthony said dryly.
“Our firm is normally extremely thorough,” Mr. Mossman, said, pulling out his handkerchief. He removed his glasses, wiped them, and put them back on. “When the will was executed our client, your biological father, did not know for certain where your mother had taken you when she left Jamaica. She led him to believe she would go to Colombia, but he doubted it because she had told him from the start that she did not wish to go back there. Apparently, he suspected she had gone through his personal papers earlier and discovered the address of his family in Brazil. He believed she might have gone there in an attempt to connect you with your roots.
“Upon your father’s death, we acted upon his instructions and sent a letter to the address in Brazil that he had provided. It was addressed to your mother and to you. The individual who presented himself in our chambers on receipt of our letter was carrying certain documents and was in possession of certain facts that appeared credible. I believe we acted in good faith and would be able to justify our actions.”
“That remains to be seen,” Sir Anthony replied, sitting back in his chair and regarding him with cool detachment.
“Well, look here,” Mr. Mossman said, relieved that at least the word lawsuit hadn’t yet arisen in the conversation. “We will gladly do whatever is possible to put this…put this right.”
“I’m delighted to hear it,” Sir Anthony said. “As a matter of fact, I want you to arrange a meeting for me. Here is what I want you to do.”
Ten minutes later, he left the chambers of Mossman & Mossman and took a taxi back to his hotel. Returning to his suite, he ordered room service, helped himself to a scotch from the minibar, and went to sit on the open balcony.
He wasn’t all that familiar with New Kingston or Kingston, for that matter. As a child he had spent most of his time wandering about the estate, which was thirty miles away, and there hadn’t been many reasons to come into the city. Yet, the panoramic view before him filled him with a sense of nostalgia, not for the past, which had been unmemorable, but for what it might have been.
He knew that Nicola had arrived in Jamaica two days earlier. Minutes after she walked out of his town house in London, he had recovered enough to realize that if she was going to marry another man, it would have to be over his dead body. He had reengaged the detective agency to find out all they could about the individual in Jamaica she intended to marry, Antonio Mendoza Torres, as speedily as possible. In particular, he wanted the name of Mr. Torres’s lawyers.
He believed he owed Henrietta an explanation for his highly unusual now-I’m-in, now-I’m-out-of-the-game performance and took her out to dinner.
“We’ve been friends for a long time, Anthony,” she said, after she had listened to his explanation, “so I had a feeling that something was up. You’re never erratic, but the way things were proceeding between you and Nic
ola I suspected you had finally been caught. I know for a fact that several young women are going to be a little disappointed.” Her gaze was so frank and her smile so warm there was no sting in her words, he blushed like a silly schoolboy.
“I’m really happy for you,” she said, “and really honored that you have taken me into your confidence, so I’ll tell you what I think. I feel that the man who gave her the seven million dollars may be exactly who she says he is, a friend, and if she marries him for that, it will be a great pity, for him and for her, since I’m pretty sure she’s head over heels in love with you.”
“She’s never said that,” he said gloomily.
“Have you ever asked her?”
“Not in so many words, but she never gave me any reason to think she was in it for anything else but the money. And the game,” he added, as an afterthought.
“Maybe she didn’t think you would believe her,” she said shrewdly. “She was very frank with me about why she wanted the job as my assistant. She’s passionate about her land, and I believe she would have done anything to keep it, until she met you.”
“Do you really think so?” he asked, looking at her.
“I’m almost certain of it.” She touched his hand. “Ask her yourself, Anthony. Don’t let her slip away from you.”
Well, he wasn’t going to. Nicola was his, no matter what, and soon she and everyone else would know that, including the man calling himself Antonio Mendoza Torres, who had given her seven million dollars.
The following morning he presented himself bright and early at the chambers of Mossman & Mossman and was shown into a small conference room, which held an oblong table and eight chairs, one on each short end and three each along the sides. He sat in one of the chairs at the short end, facing the door. He declined an offer of coffee. He had arrived fifteen minutes early, because he wanted to be there when Mr. Torres arrived. It would be a meeting just between the two of them.
Promptly at ten, the door opened and a man walked in. He stopped short, stared at Anthony, and turned pale. He half-turned toward the door, as though he intended to walk back out of the room.
“It’s locked, Enrique,” Anthony said drily. “Why don’t you take a seat.” He was unsurprised. He had considered all the possibilities and suspected that the man who had impersonated him was most likely his biological father’s estranged nephew, Enrique.
Enrique hesitated then shrugged, a gesture that acknowledged inevitability and defeat. He took the middle chair on the longer side of the table, his back to the door. “So, you are alive, then,” he said, as soon as he was seated.
“Very much so,” Anthony replied. He waited, elbows resting casually on the arm of his chair, appearing completely at ease.
“I thought you were dead.”
“And that is why you decided to take my place and my name?”
“It is a long story.”
“I have time.”
“You had been gone for several years, and your mother had long since died when the letter arrived from the lawyers,” Enrique began.
At the mention of his mother, Anthony curled his fingers into fists as a host of images filtered through his brain. He fought down his latent anger and focused on what Enrique was saying.
He already knew the story. Mossman Senior had filled him in. His biological father Felipe Torres had died two years ago and had named his illegitimate son, Antonio, as his sole beneficiary, primarily because he wished to ensure that neither the government, which he had no use for, nor his relatives in Brazil, from whom he had voluntarily become estranged, would benefit from his hard-earned fortune. But he wanted to hear Enrique’s version of events. He smiled grimly to himself, thinking that Felipe must have been turning over in his grave for the past two years at the irony of what had transpired.
“I opened the letter and read it,” Enrique continued. “At the time, unfortunately, I was in what North Americans call ‘a bit of a bind.’ I owed money to someone, a small amount all things considered, but he threatened to harm me if I did not repay it very soon. Taking your place seemed like a way out of my predicament. Your mother was dead, and no one had any idea what had really happened to you. When your mother came back for the second time she told everyone you had run away. For all we knew, you might have been dead also, so I thought my actions would be hurting no one. I told my family I was going away, to New York, and I came here instead.”
“An impostor,” Anthony reminded him, his voice hard. “With false documents and my mother’s passport to prove that you were her son. Where is it?”
“Locked in the safe at the house. You are free to take possession of the house and all the contents,” Enrique told him unnecessarily.
“I am fully aware of that,” Anthony said. What he wanted now was a truthful answer to the question that had weighed him down subconsciously for years. “Now tell me, how did my mother really die?” Of all his biological father’s relatives, he believed the only one who would tell him the truth would be Enrique.
“You do not know? Then forgive me for being the one to tell you. She was returning from an errand and was hit by a car being driven by a tourist.”
“And her funeral? How was she buried? Where was she buried?”
Enrique looked at him uncomprehendingly for a moment. Then his expression cleared. “I understand why you ask this,” he said. “My family was not very kind to you and your mother when you first came to Brazil from Jamaica, but they practice their religion, publicly at least. Your mother was given the last rites of her church and was buried in the village cemetery, not far from where many of the Torres family members are buried.”
Anguish cut swiftly through him at the thought of his mother’s final resting place denoting her as the outsider she had always been. After being told by Felipe that she and her son had to leave the estate, she had taken Antonio to Brazil, certain that the Torres family would be happy to see Felipe’s son. But the family had been cold, hostile almost, except for Enrique, who was the same age as Antonio. The two young cousins had become friends and it was Enrique who had enlightened Antonio as to why the family was so hostile toward him and his mother .
Enrique had confided to Antonio that his father Felipe had left Brazil under a cloud, his sudden departure making him the prime suspect in the murder of a factory manager and the family had been subjected to questioning for months on end, the polícia turning up on their doorstep unannounced every so often, inquiring whether they had any news of Felipe’s whereabouts. The relatives feared that if the polícia got wind of Valentina’s arrival with Felipe’s son, they would soon be on the doorstep asking more questions.
Disheartened by the hostile reception, his mother had left quietly one day, taking her son with her, and they had somehow wound up in Colombia. He didn’t even recall how it had come about that she had ended up working for the Daughtys. He only remembered that compared to how they had lived before, life there had been good. And then came that fateful night when he met that lovely lady in the Daughtys garden and his life changed forever. Her name was Lady Felicity Astonville, and she had been so taken with him, she persuaded his mother to let her take him back to England where he would have a better life. That was 1984, and he had been twelve years old.
After thinking over Lady Astonville’s request, his mother had agreed to let him go to England with them, telling him it would change his life, give him the future he would never have if he stayed with her. And she had been right. But in spite of his wonderful new life he had never stopped thinking about her. As he grew older his adoptive parents sensed his hidden sorrow and had hired a private detective agency to find her and bring her to England. The agency reported back that because of her age and the fact that her health was not good, she had been let go by the Daughtys several years ago. They provided her with a small gratuity, and she had returned to Brazil. Despite the poor treatment she and Antonio had received when they first went there under the illusion that they would be welcomed by the Torres family, it w
as still the only place outside her birth place of Santa Marta where someone would know who she was.
In his heart Anthony had always harbored a suspicion that his father’s relatives had lied to the agency and that his Catholic mother had not received a proper burial with the last rites of her church. At least now the weight of that suspicion was finally lifted, although the pain of all she had been through, much of it on his account, would probably never leave him.
With an effort, he tore his mind away from the past and tried to focus on Enrique who was still speaking.
“I have spent very little of your fortune,” Enrique was saying. “Hardly more than was required to pay the overseer and the workers. My own needs were modest. It was enough for me to be able to live in comfort and without fear. You will find that not very much has changed from the way your father left it.”
“My biological father,” Anthony amended mentally. Aloud he said, “Everything is basically intact?”
“Ah, there is a small matter. I lent money to friends who were in difficulties. I could not stand by and watch them lose their estate. But I have a signed note. So in reality you have not lost anything.”
“Why could they not have gone to the bank?”
“That you will have to ask them if it is important to know. It was not important to me. I did not ask. These people I trust.”
“Tell me about them,” Anthony said, eyeing him keenly.
“The Edgerton sisters. Pretty,” he said reflectively. “You may know them since they are…were…they will be your neighbors. Their parents died in a car crash last year, in the summer, and they wished to keep the estate and in time to become Blue Mountain coffee growers. At least, that is the dream of Nicola, the younger sister.”
“How much money did you lend them?”
“Seven million dollars. Jamaica dollars,” he amended, hoping to minimize the staggering size of the loan.